MB & Snod Blatters Alpine adventure.. Slovenia and beyond... Part 6

motobiker's post:

"Now what?" is I rode the bike to what turned out to be the strangest of all campsites.. spent the rest of the day and that night umming and aahing then the next morning leapt into action. Phone Carole Nash. who then passed all the details over to the local organiser - who called BMW Kaprun - who promised they could fix it. Was taken there that morning and was back at the campsite later that day. all fixed.

easy.

shame I missed out on Snods bike falling over.. a photo of him trying to get it back upright, veins popping on neck - would have been quite entertaining. But.. excitement aside, he didn't hang about the campsite waiting for word from me.. he went off all on his ownsome.

The next morning.. we headed back into Italy for Cortina D'Ampezzo in the Dolomites. pitched the tent and went for a ride... 4 passes. pizza. the best coffee of the entire fortnight. and finally.. all good luck ran out and it started to rain. not just rain.. it bucketed.

but not before we had 'some' fun.

 a fair sample.. but, very sadly. it was dull and damp... and higher up. very cold. The snow was exceptionally deep.. though the roads had been cleared.

So, as I say after a couple of hours the skies opened.. fortunately we made it into the bar in a petrol station just in time.. and watched people come in for a pint and a fag to help recover from the price they had just paid for petrol..

eventually the rain stopped and we went back to the campsite.. and headed (inevitably) for the bar.. more pizza followed plus rather a lot of beer. I was a tad fed up... the main reason for visiting the Dolomites isn't just the roads are like spaghetti. or that its pass after pass after pass.. etc.

its the views. the terrain is breathtaking and we couldn't see a bloody thing with the clouds being so low.. (or were we high?) probably both.

next morning.. it was so different.

blue skies and sun.. but, we couldn't hang about.. we had to go.

a few photos on the road north...

Its a shame we didn't have more time.. but the wasted day due to the breakdown had put paid to that. still, Snod got more than an eyeful so maybe he'll get to go back some day.

After that we raced north.. through Austria and had a little diversion to Fussen. just so Snod could get an eyeful of the Chitty Chitty bang bang castle.. as well as a quick stop off at the Lidl. for cheap beer and munchies. cloudy wheat beer. 26c a bottle.. whats not to like?

Because the initial ideas for this trip had been scuppered by bad weather.. bad weather we missed out on (fortunately) aside from the very edge of it on day 1. Poor Snod never got to Liechtenstein.. though hopefully Monaco made up for that.. anyway. I had a cunning flan.

we went to Lichtenstein. (note spelling)

the back passage...

We were now deep in the heart of Swabia.. an area I knew nothing about.. still it was very pleasant. fairly high up rolling hills with the Black forest to the west.  We found a great campsite.. huge place. very german. got talking to a german chap who couldn't speak a word of english.. but he liked us because we were fascinated by his 3 wheeled scooter. (the first Ive seen up close)

i liked it.. and he liked us because we liked it.  

next day.. off to the Black forest.

My post:

 I (we?) forgot to mention that while travelling across Austria on Flappy-Clutch-Lever-Wednesday a lot of people seemed to be off work or rather off school as there were a lot of yoofs driving around in their modified cars, mostly VW Golfs. The number of these cars intensified until we reached a crossroads where they were congregating, all comparing notes and some strange dark lines had appeared on the road though there were no Polizei about to put an end to their fun. They were all nice enough though, clearly there for the love of the machines rather than to make trouble. MB nipped past a slightly Max Power-esque (i.e. deafening) Golf R32 (that's a 3.2L 250BHP 4WD cage for those wonder) which the owner seemed to be surprised about. He maybe recognised what my bike was in his mirrors and decided to show what his car could do.. I pulled out to overtake in second gear and he matched me all the way to the redline, as much a surprise to me as it was for him to see us so evenly matched. I pulled back in behind and gave him a big thumbs up which seemed to go down well, big laughs all round. Got him in the end though! That night was spent tutting at how BMW build their bikes and wondering what to do, but that's pretty well documented by now.

Thursday morning was spent getting sunburnt while talking to other residents of the campsite and watching the poor rescue people try and squeeze MB's grossly overgrown bike into their van:

And then the afternoon was spent going round in circles along the side of a mountain (including stumbling across Assling), having lunch at a very cheap backerei and then stumbling across what looked like a nice easy to follow loop over a mountains, through Italy and back round into Austria right near the campsite. It started off well:

 Though the Sun was beating down so hard my concentration was fading in and out at times - a roadside sign said 33C but it actually felt like more. I followed that road through half-tunnels (one side is half missing in slots) and started to climb the mountain.. Up into the cool, this was going to be good! But then it was closed with road repairs and I had to turn around, scuppering the whole flan. On the way down I stopped to take a picture and the K fell over. This is right after I picked up back up, thanking the powers that be that it hadn't rolled down the side of the mountain!

I picked up the pieces of mirror, had a rest and tried to tell a couple of Italians to turn back as the road was closed but they didn't believe me and carried on anyway. Back the way I'd come, back to the Hofer (Aldi) in Lienz and a few minutes after I'd parked up and was trying to figure out why the pieces of mirror wouldn't fit together MB pulled into the car park! I truly didn't expect to see him for another 24 hours at least, utterly amazing. We got back to find a crazy German kid who was cycling his way through the countries along the outside of Germany, much cake and beer was had.

Friday and time was starting to get a little tight but not tight enough to stop us going to see the Dolomites, MB's most favouritest place and I can see why. It started well with Cortina D'Ampezzo feeling very, err, Italian somehow. Beautiful and no one was in a rush.

 The campsite was found, the tent was put up (and some idiot left it slightly open in the rain ) and then we left again to go see some Dolomites. Some of these are really high up, we saw ~2200m and were well into the snow but somehow it didn't feel nearly as majestic as the Grossglockner at 2500m, perhaps because the cloud didn't let us see how high it was. Then it was time for some pizza!

The base was ridiculously thin and crispy, it was just generally delicious. The same couldn't be said for the alcohol free beer which tasted like alcohol free homebrew but hey ho, the coffee afterwards helped us cope. The barmaid watched us all the time we were eating the pizzas, it is possible that one is meant for two people and she was disgusted by our gluttony but whatever. A group of bikers and the manager/owner of the place also formed a group around my bike, Ks are rare on the continent for some reason and they seemed interested in it. I just wished the mirror was still intact..

After that it was back down and sadly into the rain. When MB says we stopped at a petrol station with a bar he is not joking, people were (probably) knocking off work on a Friday and off to the bar for a few drinks. But the bar also happens to be a petrol station. Once the rain subsided it was back to the campsite in case we got caught in rain like that again and the roads were already wet, not a whole lot of fun when they're so twisty. The night consisted of wheat beer, salad, pizza and Atlas branded paint stripper high strength lager.

The next day was the first of the run home, a sad feeling. MB has covered about as much as I can remember off hand, though the German campsite that night was memorable because 1) The Bavarian beer on tap is as delicious and tangy as people say and 2) My goulash had an enormous chilli in it that turned out to be really burning hot. It was delicious otherwise though, from what I could taste. Still, onwards!